Conventionally, a clip may be introduced into a body cavity through an endoscope to grasp living tissue of a body cavity for hemostasis, marking, and/or ligating. In addition, clips are now being used in a number of applications related to gastrointestinal bleeding such as peptic ulcers, Mallory-Weiss tears, Dieulafoy's lesions, angiomas, post-papillotomy bleeding, and small varices with active bleeding.
Gastrointestinal bleeding is a somewhat common and serious condition that is often fatal if left untreated. This problem has prompted the development of a number of endoscopic therapeutic approaches to achieve hemostasis such as the injection of sclerosing agents and contact thermo-coagulation techniques. Although such approaches are often effective, bleeding continues for many patients and corrective surgery therefore becomes necessary. Because surgery is an invasive technique that is associated with a high morbidity rate and many other undesirable side effects, there exists a need for highly effective, less invasive procedures.
Mechanical hemostatic devices have been used in various parts of the body, including gastrointestinal applications. Such devices are typically in the form of clamps, clips, staples and sutures, which are able to apply sufficient constrictive forces to blood vessels so as to limit or interrupt blood flow. One of the problems associated with conventional hemostatic devices, however, is that many devices are not strong enough to cause permanent hemostasis. Further, typically once such mechanical hemostatic devices are at least partially deployed, they cannot be opened and closed repeatedly before the final release of the device, which may result in possible permanent deployment of the device at an undesirable location.
Still further, mechanical hemostatic devices typically are loaded, one at a time, within an introducer equipped to deliver and deploy the device. A first hemostatic device may be deployed, but if it becomes desirable to deliver and deploy a second hemostatic device, the introducer typically must be removed from the patient's body in order to load the second hemostatic device. The introducer then is loaded back into the patient's body to deploy the second hemostatic device, and the process is repeated for each subsequent device. However, the process of deploying only one hemostatic device at a time may become very time consuming and inconvenient, causing significant delays when it may be imperative to quickly stop bleeding.